17th April 2008 Archive

eBay says that a softening economy has slowed its online auctions on both sides of the Atlantic. But the company still made an awful lot of money during the year's first quarter. And it still has high hopes for the future.

IBM posted first-quarter financial results that blew past analyst estimates, providing the second indication in as many days that some IT outfits aren't getting dragged into a slumping US economy that some say already is in recession. The company also raised its earnings estimates for the remainder of 2008.

With Freesat, the satellite telly answer to Freeview, just weeks from launch, TV tuner specialist Hauppauge has begun punting a USB-connected box capable of picking up the free content - even Freesat's HD broadcasts.

Who remembers the movie Aliens, in which Sigourney Weaver and a team of spacegoing marines got stuck into the eponymous acid-blooded homicidal monsters? Anyone who does will be pleased to hear that one of the cunning technologies of the fictional Colonial Marines will soon be available to the French army.

Many women secretly dream of their hubby-to-be proposing on a secluded island as the sun goes down. But gaming buff Brain Klima went a step further and popped the question with a little help from Mario and Luigi.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has called for international cooperation to tackle a core of 2,755 foreign-hosted abuse sites that it says are responsible for the majority of images of children obtained by UK paedophiles.

The government has refused to investigate BT's covert wiretapping of thousands of its customers in 2006 and 2007, despite its own expert's view that without consent Phorm's advertising targeting technology is a breach of criminal law.

A group of US congressmen have introduced legislation which would ban the use of mobile phones on US aircraft, attempting to "ensure a relative amount of peace for the American public as they take to an increasingly crowded sky".

There's patching work ahead for users of alternative browsers. Mozilla updated its Firefox web browser on Wednesday in response to the discovery of a vulnerability involving its Javascript Garbage Collector function.

Ever wanted to tell Chris Moyles to shut his piehole? Or longed for Christian O'Connell to get permanent laryngitis? Intempo’s Rebel radio records all your favourite FM stations and cuts out all the DJ drivel and adverts.

A video showing one Tricia Walsh-Smith bemoaning her treatment at the hands of her estranged husband, Broadway executive Philip Smith, has delighted YouTubers and struck fear into the hearts of lawyers who've described the outburst as a "scary, new step" in acrimonious divorces:

Microsoft may not excel at delivering software on-time, but it does make one hell of a lame video. Witness an internal promotional flick about the firm's Vista operating system which turned up on YouTube.

A UK music industry trade body has proposed a tax on MP3 players that would not only ensure musicians and labels are paid their dues, but also that consumers who pay their way effectively have to cough up twice.

In a major expansion of the US government's DNA collection practices, officials plan to collect DNA samples of every citizen arrested by a federal law enforcement agency and all immigrants detained by a federal authority. The move will add 1.2 million people's genetic blueprints to the federal database every year.

Better known for its presentation of stunning examples of how not to develop code, The Daily WTF this week exposed a horrendous case of information loss when it published an article on a critical flaw in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections website.